Introduction / HW recommendation for home server

Hello Rocky Linux Community.
I am new to the community!. My name is Wolfgang and I live in Barcelona/Spain (you could have guessed form my name, right?)
Reason I am here is that I want to build a Linux Home Server. I did this once many years ago under Fedora 5!. Long time ago as I said.

I want to run a web server, mail server, home media server (emby) and use it as a home file server (mainly for backups, etc…)

I would appreciate if the community would be so nice and recommend a configuration for such a server.

Thanks in advance

Woflgang

Greetings,
I don’t have strong preferences on home lab gear, but one thing you want to make sure of is that your CPU is x86-64-v2 or newer! Upstream dropped older CPU’s from 9.0 onward.

This bit me with my fileserver that I’ve been using for years and years. My CPU was one of the last ones AMD made before the v2 became their standard… so it’s stuck on Rocky 8 until I upgrade.

But other then x86_64v2, I’d recommend at least 8GB of memory and then whatever storage you want. There’s enough good entry-level devices out there that are easy starting points. I tend to go for low power consumption devices so I prefer Intel NUCs or AMD’s from https://minisforum.com . Though I do wish they’d put IPMI on more home/low-end devices instead of just server class systems but oh well.

Hope that helps!

Hi stack,

thank you for your reply and insight.
I certainly will take that into consideration.

Thanks

You probably need to think about:

  1. Is it going to be a real server, e.g. in a rack, with vendor support, and running 24 hours a day with a backup power supply? In that case, the hardware would be completely different to a workstation PC.
  2. Do you have a network that is suitable for a server? Many home networks are designed for download only, not for huge number of incoming connections and high bandwidth.
  3. With a mail server, think about how to ensure it doesn’t get blacklisted.

You could probably do a lot of that with a Raspberry PI4 with 8GB ram. Attach an SSD disk via USB for storage and only use the internal SDCARD for the operating system. I’m not sure if Emby makes AARCH64 releases, I run it on my Synology DS218+ and I also run a VM on my NAS as it has the ability to do it. I did increase the ram to about 8-10GB though in my Synology to do that, as 2GB wouldn’t be enough. Synology also has the ability to run a mail server as well, so you could then have a number of things resolved in one go, as well as network storage accessible for everyone.

Hi Rocky Linux community.

Thanks for the responses. I reached out to Raspberry here in Spain and to discuss with the what I want to do.
And there is a challenge I am not sure how to solve with a Raspberry. I plan the server to be the modem/router of my home network. This means I need 2 ethernet cards; one for WAN and another one for LAN.
They told me that this is not possible.

Any idea if I can overcome this?

Thanks,

You can get usb ethernet adapters. So you’ll have the built-in network in the Raspberry PI, and then another one can be via USB if you like.

Otherwise, maybe look at mini-pc like Qotom, they make various models that can have 2 - 6 network ports.

If one had a managed network switch that supports VLANs, then a router with only one physical port is possible … if that port supports VLANs too. On software side Rocky does, but does that depend on hardware? (Besides, managed switches are beasts of their own.)

I googled a bit and found 2 models. Would model 1 be enough to install Rocky Linux and run a firewall, web server, email server and media server?
I plan a headless config. I figure I would also need one or two external disks.

Model 1: Qotom

· CPU: Intel Core i5-5200U 3M cache, 2,20 GHz, hasta 2,70 GHz, Broadwell, TDP 15 W Intel HD Graphics 5500, AES: yes

· 8G RAM

· HD 16G SSD

· 4 LAN Gigabit Intel I211-AT, 1 USB 3.0, 3 USB 2.0, 1 video HD

Model 2: Chatreey

· Intel Core i7-10510u, Quad-Core 8 Thread, 1.8 GHz hasta 4.9 GHz.

· 16 GB DDR4

· Intel chipset

· HD 1TB

8GB is possible, 16GB would be better. It depends what kind of mail server you wish to run, iredmail for example is doable on 4gb ram, Zimbra 8gb ram. So 50% of ram on an 8gb will be for email only. Then add media and 1-2gb for webserver, not much left for the operating system. If your website will have a database backend, then go for 16gb, especially since you have Emby on there too.

Thank you very much for the insights.
Let me go shopping…

Un saludo,

The order is placed. I will get a M5-Core i7 7820HK/HQ, 16G DDR4 1TB SSD.

That should do the job.

Thanks,

Hello everyone,
I would like to share with you my experience of the last 5 years.
Since I prefer to do things myself, I assembled a small home server from the following components for my needs.
And it has been working for almost 5 years now.

DIY
Compact Mini-Tower: SuperChassis 721TQ-350B2
Motherboard: A2SDi-TP8F !!! Heatsink is replased whit SNK-C0057A4L
Memory: 4 x Transcend 8GiB 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (0.4ns)
Boot: Samsung NVMe SSD PM981
Storadge: 4 x HGST Ultrastar He8

In order not to be like an advertisement, I try to give accurate information, without links.
Excuse me!

Do it yourself (DIY) happiness :wink: